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RandomFactor writes:

Discover has an article up discussing ongoing work on the the coming quantum internet.

Only a few hundred or so physicists in the U.S., Europe and China really comprehend how to exploit some of the weirdest, most far-out aspects of quantum physics. In this strange arena, objects can exist in two or more states at the same time, called superpositions; they can interact with each other instantly over long distances; they can flash in and out of existence. Scientists like [Quantum researcher Eden Figueroa] want to harness that bizarre behavior and turn it into a functioning, new-age internet — one, they say, that will be ironclad for sending secure messages, impervious to hacking.

Already, Figueroa says his group has transmitted what he called "polarization states" between the Stony Brook and Brookhaven campuses using fiber infrastructure, adding up to 85 miles. Kerstin Kleese van Dam, director of Brookhaven Lab's Computational Science Initiative, says it is "one of the largest quantum networks in the world, and the longest in the United States."

Next, Figueroa hopes to teleport his quantum-based messages through the air, across Long Island Sound, to Yale University in Connecticut. Then he wants to go 50 miles east, using existing fiber-optic cables to connect with Long Island and Manhattan.

As part of the U.S. Quantum Initiative signed into law in 2018, the U.S. the Department of Energy is pumping $625 million in funding into quantum research.

[Nobody] knows how far the quantum revolution will go — certainly not Figueroa.

"Many of the things these devices will do, we are still trying to figure it out," he tells me. "At the moment, we are just trying to create technology that works. The really far reaches of what is possible are still to be discovered."

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RandomFactor writes:

Plastic in landfills, like nuclear waste, is notoriously long lived. However in the past 50 years, bacteria have evolved to be capable of eating it. Now researchers have collaborated to improve on what nature started.

In 2018, University of Portsmouth's Professor John McGeehan and colleagues engineered an enzyme that can digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the primary material used in the manufacture of single-use plastic beverage bottles. Now, the same team has created a two-enzyme cocktail that can digest PET up to six times faster.

Plastics pollution represents a global environmental crisis. In response, microbes are evolving the capacity to utilize synthetic polymers as carbon and energy sources.

In 2016, a team of Japanese biologists reported the discovery and characterization of the soil bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, which uses two enzymes to depolymerize PET to its constituent monomers.

In the new study, they combined PETase and a second enzyme called MHETase, found in the soil bacterium, to generate a two-enzyme system for PET deconstruction.

The new two-enzyme system is several times faster at degrading plastic than the separate enzymes evolved by bacteria and opens the door for additional research and improvement.

Journal Reference:
Brandon C. Knott, Erika Erickson, Mark D. Allen, et al.
Characterization and engineering of a two-enzyme system for plastics depolymerization [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2006753117)

Previously:
Newly Engineered Enzyme Can Break Down PET Plastic to Raw Materials
UK MPs Propose Banning Microbeads
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Munching Bacteria Discovered
Ban on Microbeads Passes U.S. House of Representatives

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MrPlow wrote in with a submission, via IRC, for SoyCow639.

Spammers Add Random Text To Shortened Links To Evade Detection:

Spammers are using a new technique of generating URLs to evade detection by humans and spam filters alike.

This technique comprises adding random, unused text bits to shortened links, to disguise them as full-sized URLs and bypass the scrutiny of email gateways.

[...] A URL or URI consists of multiple parts, with some being optional. This is specified by an industry-standard called RFC3986.

[...] A URL or an IP address can be represented in different ways. Attackers are abusing these variations in IP/URL formats allowed by the IETF's specifications to cause "semantic attacks."

The URL schema allows for use of another part called "Authority." This part allows you to specify "userinfo"— which is something like username, within the URL between the protocol and the host parts.

For example, this could look like, https://ax@bleepingcomputer.com/tag/security

But because "userinfo" is rarely used especially with HTTP(S) URLs, it is often ignored by the server, and navigating to the URL above would still lead you to https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tag/security/.

[...] In the case of this particular spam campaign, the destinations it connects to are all known websites, such as the j.mp URL shortener service, Pastebin.com, etc.

But, the structure of the hardcoded URLs includes a gibberish "userinfo" part right before the domain name, to give off the impression these are different URLs.

Therefore, for example, if an enterprise security product was previously blocking the malicious link https://j[.]mp/kassaasdskdd it isn't clear if the product would also interpret something like https://nonsensical-text@j[.]mp/kassaasdskdd in the same manner and block it too.

[...] A list of Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and Trustwave's detailed findings are provided on their blog.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

New study sheds light on 'dead water' phenomenon -- Sott.net:

Norwegian mariners called it dødvann — dead water. They'd known for centuries that patches of seawater in narrow fjords could mysteriously sap a ship's speed, drastically slowing it or stopping it altogether. In his 1897 book, Farthest North, explorer Fridtjof Nansen wrote of his encounter with dead water north of Siberia in 1893: "We could hardly get on at all for the dead-water, and we swept the whole sea along with us." Dead water, Nansen noted, occurred "where a layer of fresh water rests upon the salt water of the sea," as happens in northern fjords when snow and ice from mountains melt into the ocean.[Emphasis from original article - Ed]

Nansen's report of dead water was investigated by scientists at the time, including the Swedish oceanographer Vagn Walfrid Ekman. In 1904, Ekman published research that showed dead water was caused by hidden waves in a dense subsurface layer of salt water that slowed the forward motion of a ship. Today's speedy ships easily overcome these submerged waves, and for most mariners dead water is now largely forgotten.

But more than 100 years later, scientists are still exploring the phenomenon, and a new investigation has uncovered more details about its underlying mechanics.

Journal Reference:
Johan Fourdrinoy, Julien Dambrine, Madalina Petcu, et al. The dual nature of the dead-water phenomenology: Nansen versus Ekman wave-making drags [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1922584117)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Researchers unveil sensor that rapidly detects COVID-19 infection:

[...] Caltech researchers have developed a new type of multiplexed test (a test that combines multiple kinds of data) with a low-cost sensor that may enable the at-home diagnosis of a COVID infection through rapid analysis of small volumes of saliva or blood, without the involvement of a medical professional, in less than 10 minutes.

The research was conducted in the lab of Wei Gao, assistant professor in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng department of medical engineering.

[...] Gao's sensors are made of graphene, a sheet-like form of carbon. A plastic sheet etched with a laser generates a 3-D graphene structure with tiny pores. Those pores create a large amount of surface area on the sensor, which makes it sensitive enough to detect, with high accuracy, compounds that are only present in very small amounts. In this sensor, the graphene structures are coupled with antibodies, immune system molecules that are sensitive to specific proteins, like those on the surface of a COVID virus, for example.

[...] The new version of the sensor, which Gao has named SARS-CoV-2 RapidPlex, contains antibodies and proteins that allow it to detect the presence of the virus itself; antibodies created by the body to fight the virus; and chemical markers of inflammation, which indicate the severity of the COVID-19 infection.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2020/09/color-blindness-is-inaccurate-term.html

Color blindness is an inaccurate term. Most color-blind people can see color, they just don't see the same colors as everyone else.

There have been a number of articles written about how to improve graphs, charts, and other visual aids on computers to better serve color-blind people. That is a worthwhile endeavor, and the people writing them mean well, but I suspect very few of them are color-blind because the advice is often poor and sometimes wrong. The most common variety of color blindness is called red-green color blindness, or deuteranopia, and it affects about 6% of human males. As someone who has moderate deuteranopia, I'd like to explain what living with it is really like.

The answer may surprise you.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

'Never shoot with a wonky pea!': meet the alternative world champions:

Two years ago, I found myself on the village green in Witcham in Cambridgeshire. It was my birthday and my boyfriend Ian had "treated" me by taking me to the worldpeashootingchampionship. Being a local, he had entered the competition for many years, and won twice. I had no idea what to expect.

The competition was started in 1971 by John Tyson, a local schoolteacher. After confiscating some peashooters in the playground, he had the idea of holding a competition to raise funds to build a village hall.

You stand 12ft away from a target that's 1ft in diameter; it's filled with putty and has three rings. The inner ring, which has a similar diameter to that of a tin can, has a score of five points, the middle ring scores three points and the outer ring scores one point. Sometimes the peas stick in the putty, sometimes they don't, but that's not important. It's all about the pea leaving an impression in the putty when it hits the target.

The peashooter tube can be either metal or plastic, but it must be 12in long. Some of them are fitted with laser sights. The peas are hard and brown, and it's best for them to fit the inside of the tube almost exactly. You don't want them rattling around inside. You can get some square-ish ones in a packet that have shrivelled a little, but they can catch in the tube. Never shoot with a wonky pea!

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

TechCrunch:

Facebook today says it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in an international "data scraping" operation. The operation extended across Facebook properties, including both Facebook and Instagram, as well as other large websites and services, including Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn and YouTube. The companies, who gathered the data of Facebook users for "marketing intelligence" purposes, did so in violation of Facebook's Terms of Service, says Facebook.

The businesses named in the lawsuits are Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Unimania Inc., a business incorporated in Delaware.

[...] Facebook's latest legal case is slightly different because the company is accusing BrandTotal of scraping Facebook profile data that wasn't inherently public. Facebook says the accused data scraper used a browser extension installed on users' computers to gain access to their Facebook profile data.

[...] Facebook isn't just cracking down on data scraping businesses to protect user privacy, however. It's because failing to do so can lead to large fines. Facebook at the beginning of this year was ordered to pay out over half a billion dollars to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged systemic violation of an Illinois privacy law. Last year, it settled with the FTC over privacy lapses and had to pay a $5 billion penalty. As governments work to further regulation online privacy and data violations, fines like this could add up.

Original Submission

In a recent news release Colonel Joseph H. Parker, CCAD Commander said, "This is the first of up to 760 Black Hawks that will modernize the helicopter fleet through the Army's recapitalization program. They are Army built and Army owned." CCAD's recapitalization program reduces the costs of replacing aging helicopters with new ones and avoids spending approximately $9M in tax dollars with each rebuild.

Since its original induction as a UH-60 Lima (L model) airframe, CCAD configured this helicopter into the current UH-60 Victor (V model). The upgrade replaced analog display with a modern digital, open glass cockpit, which allows for an easy-to-use, integrated Pilot Vehicle Interface. The reconfiguration enhances safety and interoperability with other advanced aircraft currently on the battlefield.

Related:
Northrop Grumman's Integrated Mission Equipment Package
Northrop Grumman's digital cockpit completes initial operational test and evaluation
US Army conducts first operational test of UH60V Black Hawk

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Astronomers have used microlensing to detect an approximately Earth-mass planet wandering between the stars.

Finding something in deep space that emits no light of its own is extremely challenging. But two organizations are doing just that. They're the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) collaboration and the KMTN (Korean Microlensing Telescope Network) collaboration.

Now, a team of scientists from both groups have announced the discovery of a low-mass rogue planet. There are no stars near it, and its distance from Earth is unconfirmed.

The team says it proves that the microlensing technique is effective at finding Earth-mass planets that are free-floating in space.

The paper announcing the discovery has 30 authors.

A relatively tiny object like a low-mass planet doesn't bend much light, and not for too long, either. In their paper the authors say "Microlensing events due to terrestrial-mass rogue planets are expected to have extremely small angular Einstein radii (.1 µas) and extremely short timescales (0.1 day)." According to the authors, this is the "most extreme short-timescale microlens discovered to date."

Estimates for the number of rogue planets wandering our galaxy range between "a few billion and a trillion."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Fnord666:

For Subway, A Ruling Not So Sweet. Irish Court Says Its Bread Isn't Bread:

In a decision shocking to those familiar with the $5 footlong, Ireland's Supreme Court has ruled: Subway bread isn't actually bread.

At least, not legally.

That's because its bread has too much sugar, the court said Tuesday. The country's Value-Added Tax Act of 1972 says tax-exempt bread can't have sugar, fat and bread improver exceed 2% of the weight of flour.

In Subway's recipe, sugar makes up 10% of the weight of the flour, according to the judgment. That's five times what the law deems acceptable.

[...] "The resulting product falls outside the definition of 'bread' for the purposes of the Act," the ruling said. Five judges considered the case.

[...] An Irish Subway franchisee, Bookfinders Ltd., prompted this legal interpretation after it sought a tax break for some of its menu items.

The country allows "staple" foods, which include bread, to have value-added taxes set at 0%. The franchisee originally submitted a claim in 2006, asking for a refund for some of the value-added taxes it paid in 2004 and 2005.

[...] "Subway's bread is, of course, bread. We have been baking fresh bread in our restaurants for more than three decades and our guests return each day for sandwiches made on bread that smells as good as it tastes," a Subway spokesperson said in a statement. The company says it's reviewing the ruling.

A 6-inch Subway bread roll contains 3 to 5 grams of sugar, except for gluten-free, which has 7, according to data from the company.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

3D Printing Industry ICON partners with NASA to develop 3D printed Moon infrastructure in 'Project Olympus'

Texas-based construction company ICON has gained a NASA contract to develop a 3D printed off-world construction system for the Moon.

Project Olympus will see ICON partner with architecture firms BIG and SEArch+ to design robust lunar structures that can be built using materials available on the Moon's surface. As part of the program, ICON has also created a new division, dedicated to developing and demonstrating prototype elements for a full-scale space-based 3D printing system.

Through the project, NASA aims to develop a more sustainable presence on the Moon, and in doing so, allow humanity to become a permanently spacefaring civilization.

See also: 3D-printed houses completed for Austin's homeless population

Related: NASA Announces the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge For Moon and Mars Bases
Startup Can 3D Print Small Homes in 12-24 Hours, for Up to $10,000 Each

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Watch a meteroid bounce off the Earth's atmosphere:

Last week, a small meteoroid stopped by for a quick visit into our atmosphere before bouncing back off into the cosmos.

Earthgrazing meteoroids, as they're called, are already pretty rare, according to Universe Today, showing up just a few times per year. But even more uncommon: This one was caught on tape — and as more meteoroid-spotting cameras are set up around the world, videos like this might grow more common.

(1/2) An earthgrazer above N Germany and the Netherlands was observed by 8 #globalmeteornetwork cameras on Sept 22, 03:53:35 UTC. It entered the atmosphere at 34.1 km/s, reached the lowest altitude of ~91 km and bounced back into space!@westernuScience@IMOmeteors@amsmeteorspic.twitter.com/5EgRivdcsu

— Denis Vida (@meteordoc) September 22, 2020

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow639:

Quantum entanglement realized between distant large objects:

A team of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have succeeded in entangling two very different quantum objects. The result has several potential applications in ultra-precise sensing and quantum communication and is now published in Nature Physics.

[...] Researchers succeeded in making entanglement between a mechanical oscillator—a vibrating dielectric membrane—and a cloud of atoms, each acting as a tiny magnet, or what physicists call "spin." These very different entities were possible to entangle by connecting them with photons, particles of light. Atoms can be useful in processing quantum information and the membrane—or mechanical quantum systems in general—can be useful for storage of quantum information.

Professor Eugene Polzik, who led the effort, states that: "With this new technique, we are on route to pushing the boundaries of the possibilities of entanglement. The bigger the objects, the further apart they are, the more disparate they are, the more interesting entanglement becomes from both fundamental and applied perspectives. With the new result, entanglement between very different objects has become possible."

Journal Reference:
Rodrigo A. Thomas, Michał Parniak, Christoffer Østfeldt, et al. Entanglement between distant macroscopic mechanical and spin systems, Nature Physics (DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-1031-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Parrots removed from British wildlife park after swearing at visitors:

Five parrots have been removed from public view at a British wildlife park after they started swearing at customers.

The foul-mouthed birds were split up after they launched a number of different expletives at visitors and staff just days after being donated to Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in eastern England.

"It just went ballistic, they were all swearing," the venue's chief executive Steve Nichols told CNN Travel on Tuesday. "We were a little concerned about the children."

Original Submission